DAILY TRIFECTA: Ted Cruz Tilts At Chinese Windmills
Red scare tactics
THE SET-UP: Sen. Ted Cruz is on to them. He knows exactly what they’re up to … and he’s not gonna let them get away with it!
Who are “they”? And what are “they” doing?
Here’s Ted talking at his super-duper scary Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing titled: Enter the Dragon—China and the Left’s Lawfare Against American Energy Dominance:
We're witnessing right now a systematic campaign against American energy. There is a coordinated assault by the radical left, backed and paid for by the Chinese Communist Party to seize control of our courts and weaponize litigation against our energy producers.
…and that’s not all…
There is a coordinated assault by the radical left, backed and paid for by the Chinese Communist Party, to seize control of our courts, to weaponize litigation against our energy producers, all in order to undermine American energy dominance.
…also, brainwashing…
[T]he judiciary itself is being quietly captured and brainwashed as left wing nonprofits host closed door trainings that indoctrinate judges to adopt the ideological goals of the climate lawfare machine.”
If you’re gonna float a Chinese Communist plot to bring down Mom, Apple Pie & Chevrolet, you’d better incorporate some brainwashing. And if you’re gonna try to defend the oil industry’s decades-long effort to cover-up what they knew about their pivotal role in anthropogenic climate change … and you’re gonna do so in spite of a palpably hotter and hotter world … there’s no better scapegoat than Chinese Communists!
Commies can be blamed for nearly everything because most Americans know very little about communism or Karl Marx. It’s almost a blank canvas for propagandists. Maybe that’s right-wingers were a little lost after the Cold War abruptly ended.
Well, by the end of the 90s they were back in the swing of things. Oddly enough, I attended a Chinese threat-themed House hearing led by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) back in 1999. It featured the Sinophobic stylings of Bill Gertz and it explored China’s plot to take over the world. It felt like I’d stumbled into a John Birch Society meeting in Orange County circa 1959, but with Communist China playing the part of Soviet Russia.
The folks at that hearing were on the fringe.
As China transitioned from Corporate America’s sweatshop to a gleaming, high tech-superpower, Sinophobia has gone mainstream. When the House formed its "China Task Force" in 2020, it was a bipartisan affair. Now everything is framed as a competition with “our adversary” in China … or, more precisely, the “Chinese Communist Party.” We regularly hear China or the CCP referred to as an “enemy” or “the enemy” … particularly as it pertains to the “race” to “win'“ artificial intelligence (whatever that means).
So, it kinda makes sense that the junior Senator from the Petrostate of Texas desperately wants to turn environmental advocacy and increasingly cheaper clean energy into Chinese plots. Ted is nothing if not a dutiful servant of the Empire of Oil.
Unfortunately for Ted Cruz, he’s Ted Cruz. No Republicans showed up for his hearing. Four Democrats did attend—Sens. Whitehouse, Durbin, Blumenthal and Welch—and Whitehouse, who is the Senate’s leading voice on climate, defended the right to both sue and to press for criminal changes against oil companies … and he derided Cruz’s hearing as, predictably, based on a “conspiracy theory.”
Cruz’s accusation that Chinese Communist money funds clean energy advocates and lawsuits against Big Oil hinged on research by “State Armor”—a China-focused think tank ... or think tank-ish. What they are exactly is not clear. What is clear is their monomaniacal focus on the “threat” posed by China. Here’s a blurb from their website:
America needs a nation-wide response to protect its citizens against the Chinese Communist Party. Together, we can build a resilient nation and counter the threat of Communist China.
State Armor — Global Threats. State Solutions.
State Armor CEO Michael Lucci came armed with a new report that identified one possible culprit: Energy Foundation China, a San Francisco-based nonprofit said to be “controlled by CCP members.” Said Lucci:
“Our report exposes how Energy Foundation China functions not as an independent nonprofit, but as a vehicle advancing the strategic interests of the Chinese Communist Party by funding U.S. green energy initiatives to shift American supply chains toward Beijing and undermine our energy security. Policymakers must act.”
Ted agreed, saying “this is not about climate. It is about global energy dominance and control.”
I hate to break to Ted … but when it comes to renewables and clean energy, China is already approaching “global energy dominance.” And while it’s true China is the top polluter, there is evidence of a clean energy transition well underway. The bottom line is China is beating the US badly in the race to build renewables and in the global business of clean energy. They are well-positioned for the superheated world Ted, Trump and Big Oil all seem committed to ushering-in.
In fact, it might better suit their interests if America did not make a transition to clean energy. Maybe they are glad Trump is doubling down hard on coal and oil. The US is ceding the market.
Meanwhile, China isn’t bombing petrostates, nor have they in the past. Instead, it’s using soft power and the promise of clean energy to win friends and influence people—two things notably difficult for Ted Cruz. - jp
TITLE: China Leads the World in AI Energy Innovation
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/China-Leads-the-World-in-AI-Energy-Innovation.html
EXCERPTS: As early as 2020, the Chinese state-owned natural gas giant Gas Holdings Ltd. was using artificial intelligence to more accurately predict complex and dynamic shifts in natural gas demand. These AI-driven models can use both historical data and real-time inputs to calculate shifts in demand faster than human employees ever could.
As China’s grid becomes increasingly powered by renewable energies, however, the issue of forecasting becomes even trickier and even more important. China leads the world in renewable energy deployment. In May alone, China added so much solar and wind power to its grid that the generation capacity of those additions alone rivals the entire electricity output of Poland. As China continues to break its own renewable energy records, its grid becomes much more dependent on variable energies, and therefore much more weather-dependent. Accurate forecasting is therefore paramount of national energy security.
To this end, a new transformer-based weather forecasting system has been piloted in China to monitor and make calculated predictions around domestic electricity markets. The project, fronted by the firms TerraQuanta and Horizon Power, marks “a major step forward in aligning AI innovation with a weather-driven decarbonizing grid” according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). The large language model employed in the project has been trained on over 40 years of worldwide weather data and is powered by 5 billion parameters to produce between 7 and 15 forecasts a day. The system is reportedly 50,000 times more efficient than traditional modelling methods. “Now used across Horizon’s 2,000 GWh annual trading portfolio, It enables faster smarter decisions in volatile electricity spot markets reducing risk and boosting profitability,” reports the WEF.
All that variable energy also requires massive amounts of energy storage infrastructure. Since wind and solar power respond to weather rather than demand, supply and demand are often mismatched. This requires vast storage capacity to capture excess energy produced when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, which can then be fed back into the grid as needed. This, too, can be massively improved through the use of artificial intelligence.
AI is boosting both the design and the safety mechanisms of battery storage. The timelines to develop new, more efficient batteries, has been slashed by magnitudes thanks to the integration of large language models. “Engineers simply type a goal — ‘raise energy density’ — and the cloud platform runs physics-grade AI simulation models across 70 variables, returning an optimal cell blueprint with full citations,” reports the WEF in relation to a Chinese battery venture led by software company Electroder and Tsinghua University.
TITLE: 580,000,000 kWh stored — China is testing something ‘more powerful than hydrogen’
https://www.ecoportal.net/en/china-testing-powerful-hydrogen/9868/
EXCERPTS: [T]he China Southern Power Grid…has just unveiled a new energy storage project—the Baochi Energy Storage Station in Wenshan, Yunnan.
This site is a national pilot project and the first large-scale hybrid lithium–sodium battery energy storage facility in the country. It is also the first in the world to use a grid-forming sodium‑ion battery system. Built with an investment of more than CNY 460 million (about $63.8 million) and spanning roughly 34,000 square meters, the Baochi plant has an installed capacity of 200 MW and a storage capacity of 400 MWh.
The site operates on a dual daily charge–discharge cycle, allowing it to regulate roughly 580 GWh per year — enough to supply about 270,000 households. According to Science and Technology Daily, nearly 98% of the energy it stores comes from renewable sources. The facility is connected to more than 30 wind and solar farms across the province, making it a vital tool for balancing fluctuations in clean energy generation and supporting the grid’s reliability.
The plant’s lithium–sodium hybrid design is meant to offer longer cycle life, faster response times, and stable performance across a temperature range of -20°C to 45°C. The use of sodium‑ion technology also takes advantage of China’s abundant sodium reserves, making it a cost‑effective solution for large‑scale energy storage, the Global Times explained.
At the heart of the site is China’s first high‑capacity sodium‑ion battery array, which operates roughly six times faster than traditional lithium‑ion batteries. The hybrid design allows for a quick and flexible response to shifts in supply and demand, making it ideal for managing the variability of wind and solar generation.
With roughly 70% of Yunnan’s electricity now coming from renewable sources, the Baochi site has become a key piece of the region’s grid. According to Wu Bin, who serves as the deputy manager for the Baochi Energy Storage Station project, the facility is designed to support more than 30 wind and solar farms across the province.
TITLE: China taps agricultural waste to power clean energy transition
https://bioenergytimes.com/china-taps-agricultural-waste-to-power-clean-energy-transition/
EXCERPTS: In Xuzhou, a city in Jiangsu Province in eastern China, a biomass power plant is turning farm waste into electricity. Mechanical claws at the facility continuously feed dried straw onto conveyor belts, which then carry the material into furnaces to be converted into energy. The plant can handle about 300,000 tonnes of crop waste annually, producing over 220 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, reported Bioenergy Insight.
“This saves around 90,000 tonnes of coal and reduces carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 200,000 tonnes each year,” said Zhang Yunfei, director at the State Grid Xuzhou Power Supply Company.
Biomass energy—sourced from leftover crops, tree trimmings, animal waste, and household organic refuse—is increasingly being used in China’s push for clean energy. Once considered useless, these materials are now viewed as a key resource in the country’s shift away from fossil fuels.
“Fewer farmers are burning crop residue in fields, which used to cause pollution and fire hazards. Now, the straw is brought to biomass plants,” Zhang added. “Xuzhou has an abundance of biomass and high potential for converting it into energy.” The city operates 17 biomass power plants, with a total capacity of 335.6 megawatts, generating nearly 2 billion kilowatt-hours annually.
China is one of the world’s largest producers of biomass, generating about 3.5 billion tonnes of agricultural, forestry, and household waste each year. But much of it still goes unused. In January, the country enacted its first national energy law, which encourages regions to develop biomass power based on local conditions.
Yu Tong, head of the China Association for the Promotion of Industrial Development, said shifting to biomass energy is essential. “Biomass is flexible—it can be used as a solid, liquid, or gas—and it can replace fossil fuels in many areas.”
A report on China’s biomass industry estimates that by the end of 2024, the country had installed 45.99 million kilowatts of biomass power capacity, producing 208.3 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and around 500 million cubic meters of biogas.
Yang Xudong, a professor at Tsinghua University, said there is still more to be done. “Biomass is easy to store and transport, and it can take the place of other commercial fuels. It offers strong economic benefits and helps maintain a low carbon footprint,” he said. “Going forward, we should improve the entire supply chain to make the most of this clean energy source.”
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